The Need for Speed, Distance and Rest.
Gary was a good athlete and he was successful at every sport he tried. Gary was a hard worker also. He was always the one shooting hoops after practice, staying after football to lift weights, and doing extra sprints during track practice. He thought that the harder he worked the more successful at sports he would be. This philosophy worked in high school and the athlete of the year award was presented to him at the end of his senior year. Because of his accomplishments, he received a scholarship for track and cross-country to a good college.
Gary knew that this scholarship was his ticket to a college degree and he wanted to do all he could to keep it. So Gary began his summer long training, which he believed would be his ticket to college success. Every day Gary ran grueling workouts. Often he ran miles of fartleks and then topped of his runs with accelerations. Other days he ran successive four hundred meters dashes in sixty seconds with one minute of rest in between. Gary thought that the more pain he felt during the workout the greater the dividends he would receive. Workout after workout, session after session, Gary continued the hard workouts until the summer was over.
Then he went to college and realized that his thinking was all wrong. He had slowly been driving his body towards a physical breakdown and certain injury and his season came to an abrupt halt after his second race. At the end of a grueling race Gary began his final kick with a competitor right in front of him. He caught up to him and ran stride for stride with him going into the final hundred meters. Then Gary fell and he couldn't get up. He had pulled his hamstring. His body had finally given out. Gary realized after that summer that a combination of speed training and long distance training with easy days is better than training with just speed or long distance.
There are two types of extreme training.